First Responders
by truhekili
Summary: Alex/Meredith Friendship. Begins with the Season 6 finale, and covers the first 3-4 weeks afterward. How do Meredith and Alex respond to the events of episodes 6:23-6:24? One shot. Complete. Alternating Alex/Meredith viewpoints throughout.


************** Author's Note**: **Alternating Alex/Meredith viewpoints throughout. ********************

The bloody elevator door slammed shut like a coffin, sealing him in silence.

* * *

It was gun shots and chaos and panic and screams and arms grabbing her and a frantic desperation she never believed Cristina was capable of, until she saw her eyes.

* * *

He hit another hard surface with a jarring thud, another explosion echoing through his body, a flurry of voices and hands already too far away receding in a dim haze.

* * *

It was more gun shots and screaming and Cristina insisting that she couldn't stop and monitors beeping and sobbing gasps and a desperate plea that took all the words Meredith had.

* * *

An icy steel blade pierced his chest and there was too much red and she'd never come back no matter how loud he called and she smelled like antiseptic and beer and bar nuts.

* * *

The blood was still pooling in her shoes and Cristina was shaking and Owen was staring at her wide-eyed and her hands stayed rock steady as she pulled the suture line through his shoulder.

* * *

He was still too far away and his eyes couldn't open and the smell was making him queasy and he was sinking, floating, spinning, until the next hard thud ripped through him, driving the oxygen from his lungs as sirens wailed in the distance.

* * *

Her half-sister was on the phone crying and Alex was in surgery and Derek was finally stable and going to ICU and Cristina was glued to Owen and she'd just thrown her pregnancy test kit away and it wasn't even 8:00 pm yet.

* * *

Hands flew over him, and it was all a blur of searing pain and queasy and gloves and wires and tubes and demands that he open his eyes, as if he freaking could.

* * *

Derek's vitals were fine, his labs were fine, Owen and Cristina were fine, and she was fine. They were all going to be fine, at least, once Alex's vent stopped triggered, and Lexi stopped rocking in her chair, too bug eyed to notice the blood still splattering her scrubs.

* * *

There were fingers around his sometimes: Lexi's were jittery and damp, Mere's cooler and more steady, Yang's electric, Bailey's short and square and demanding.

* * *

Derek heard about the baby. It was awkward and distracting and he was fine and he was trying too hard to be fine for her, her and the baby that wouldn't be, and she just wanted him to stop saying her name as if names were some kind of apology.

* * *

She brought him a green apple though he still hadn't woken; it was 3 am and too quiet in the on call rooms and intolerably still at the house when she returned briefly to retrieve some clothes and Izzie never returned her calls and the monitors were strangely calming, neon lights flickering to the rhythmic hum of oxygen being pumped into his lungs.

* * *

She listened to the physical therapist explain the next few days, as if either of needed the mini tutorial on post-op care that they'd both delivered hundreds of times, and cursed the steep steps in her house and nodded encouragement as Derek shifted gingerly out of his hospital bed.

* * *

He was awake enough to make the nurses hate him, and demanding his shoes, which had been bagged at the crime scene, and she didn't ask why Lexi wasn't visiting much.

* * *

Derek was released in eight days, with a stack of forms and a list of post-op instructions that she knew by heart. She needed desperately to keep busy, to fix something - to do something - but nothing came readily to mind as he slid awkwardly into the car.

* * *

He fought with Altman and the therapists and hurled up another green apple all over his shirt; she didn't offer to help as he cursed in a raspy voice that couldn't possibly be his and struggled to clean himself up.

* * *

Derek wasn't awake much the first week home, and he was still too sympathetic and he remembered way too much and she almost wanted to run when he mentioned babies or extra bed rooms and there were still no words to quell the pleading sadness in his eyes.

* * *

She bought cereal and milk the morning she brought him home, with his papers stuffed haphazardly in a torn folder and a post-op appointment for the following week and a rage that she was half sure was all that had kept him alive, was all that was keeping him alive, if it didn't eat him alive.

* * *

They had another house talk, and he was still exhausted but trying to take care of her, which was exhausting her, and she hoped to hell that he wasn't giving up being Chief out of some misplaced sense of guilt that he'd only resent her for later, and then forever, as if she hadn't already paid enough for standing in the way of her mother's dreams.

* * *

He was surly and wobbly and sicker then she expected and he'd crawl before he'd ask for help and Izzie still hadn't returned her phone calls.

* * *

Derek started gazing longingly at the Neurosurgery journals she brought for him, and talking about house building again, but not about kids' bedrooms this time, or how the irrational guilt was gnawing at him, and his forced optimism just depressed her.

* * *

He almost popped his stitches, and nearly toppled down the stairs, and fell asleep on the couch watching her mother's old bowel dissections, a bewildering lump of raw anger and fatigue and frustration slumped stiffly beneath two blankets.

* * *

They went to appointments, and they met with Richard about her finally returning to work, nearly three weeks after the day…the day…Richard wished Derek well, told him to take all the time he needed, and told her to take another week.

* * *

She drove him to another post-op appointment. They didn't need to ask - about blood or bullets or babies - not with a familiar silence curled peacefully around them. Alex cursed inwardly as they pulled out his stitches, but he almost didn't flinch - almost.

* * *

She threw the morning newspaper in the recycling bin without unrolling it, again, and spread Derek's new house plans across the kitchen table, adding two more rooms and a security fence. She almost tentatively sketched a crib in the nursery, but then he'd be apologizing again, as if he could protect her even from her own body.

* * *

He had her drop him near the corner; he could damn well walk the short distance to the door, and navigate a few freaking stairs.

* * *

She'd pick Alex up again after she re-filled Derek's prescriptions, and ran a few errands. It would be good for him to get out, she repeated to herself. He'd be fine at Joe's.

* * *

She couldn't be a red head, not that crazy fake blood red anyway, or have short hair. She'd have to be drunk, too, too drunk to notice that he didn't have much stamina, and drunk enough to miss the angry red scars that raked across his torso when he moved too fast.

Not that anyone would be that drunk this early, he smirked, staring back down into his drink as the smell of beer and stale bar nuts engulfed him, almost making him nauseous.

Swirling the club soda, he ignored the fuzzy images of blondes and brunettes at the edges of his vision, the muffled chatter, the television blaring above the counter, and the noisy darts game in the corner, his trembling fingers sliding across the cold glass.

Bars had always been home, especially Joe's. Bars were beer and sex and darts and just enough noise to drown out the crazy. Bars had always been almost enough, at least for that, at least, until the crazy came armed.

"You ready?" Meredith asked, sliding into the seat beside him as her keys clanked on the hard wooden counter.

He didn't flinch, wouldn't flinch, refused to flinch, and just nodded as he pushed his glass away.

"Yeah," he muttered, turning away from her to ease out of his seat with a mute wince, and grateful that she turned the other way, and didn't offer to help.

Two weeks, they'd told him: Two more weeks until he could drive himself. He'd have to not flinch by then, at sirens, or flashes of light, or the sight of women with short hair, or the stabbing pain that still seared across his back as he settled into Mere's car.

* * *

"I got new shoes," she said casually, several moments into the trip. The words dropped into the car as if they'd fallen from some other conversation, between two people who'd ever discussed shoe shopping before.

She'd thrown her old ones out, after she sewed Owen up. They all knew about the miscarriage by now, but she hadn't told anyone the details. She wouldn't have needed to tell him anyway; he spent enough time on Neonatal to know.

"Good," he stammered, with a nod. "That's…good. New shoes."

It still wasn't completely Alex: the tone, the voice, the words, the still too pale skin; he was still running a pint or so too low to be Alex; being Alex required the full six pints of blood. It required way more energy then he had at the moment.

"I almost got green ones, this time," she added, picturing her new Keds, still in the shopping bag on the back seat.

"With blue scrubs?" he smirked.

"That's what I thought," she agreed, nodding her head.

This wasn't her, either, talking about shoe shopping, and it wasn't them, using words just to fill silence. But she'd almost laughed hysterically when Mark recounted his life advice: "eat more bacon." That was Alex, practical about the details, like sensible work shoes.

She'd brought him his black sneakers, the ones that were easiest to tie, the day she drove him home from the hospital. They'd bagged his old work shoes at the scene, the scene that still left Lexi in crying jags and hysterics some nights, though she mostly stayed at Mark's place these days.

Parking the car, she followed him up the steps and into the kitchen, watching as he briefly eyed the mail pile and message board, before grabbing two beers from the fridge, sliding one wordlessly across the counter to her before heading toward the stairs.

Unscrewing the top, she almost laughed at the muffled curses as he struggled to the top landing. That was Alex, too.

She might have said something, about the beer, but he'd be out cold before he finished half of it any way, and it wasn't like he was driving, or like half a beer would interfere much with his meds. He'd have been pissed anyway, and he still needed most of the pissed he could muster to do battle with the stairs.

She stared at the spot he'd vacated, not far from where she'd wiped up her mother's blood. The hospital had always been Ellis' home, too, the house an annoying distraction from where she most wanted to be, a prison even, after Thatcher left, and Richard went back to his wife, and it had been just the two of them.

The hospital had been a refuge from that, from it being just the two of them. It had to be home, since home could never have been just the two of them.

Walking into the living room, she switched on the television, grateful that the local news had finally moved the SGH massacre down towards the second half of the broadcast, and that she could at least get the weather without graphic images replaying across the screen.

Izzie must have heard by now, she thought, and deleted her phone messages, or changed her number entirely. She hadn't expected anything anyway, not after the day Alex turned up in her own hospital room clutching a wrinkled sheet of notebook paper.

Setting her beer on the coffee table, she fingered the house plans Derek had drawn up. She'd already penciled in a fenced yard for a dog, and a room for Cristina, since she'd never trust Owen – not after the choking, not after Teddy – and a room for Alex, right near the nursery, since he'd probably end up in Peds despite himself.

Cristina would want marble in her bathroom, she thought idly, and Alex would need shelves for his trophies. It was absurd, really, to think that way, except that she'd know where everyone was, then, and her quirky little family would be safe, and she'd know where to find them in the middle of the night, when she woke with a start.

Staring blankly back at the screen, she noticed that it was still scarcely eight o'clock, though the house was eerily quiet, and she was more tired then she could ever remember being, though she hadn't even returned to work yet.

Climbing the stairs, she stopped briefly by Alex's room, pushing the door open quietly to ensure that he'd taken his meds. He was already long asleep, curled under his blankets, and she noticed with a slight frown that his windows were still closed. That wasn't Alex, either, anymore then the heavy jacket thrown over the chair by his desk.

It goes away, she remembered casually assuring patients, the crushing fatigue and cold that accompanied mass blood loss. It was a minor point to surgeons, since surgeons weren't interested in things that resolved themselves. Surgeons went in and fixed things; surgeons were the ones on the offensive, surgeons couldn't afford to wait for healing.

Noting that he'd taken his meds, she pulled the door shut, crossing the hall and dropping carefully into her own bed, sure that Derek hadn't stirred since she'd gone to retrieve Alex after his appointment. She shifted carefully, trying not to jostle him.

They always told patients to keep moving after surgery, too, despite the scars. She might have added something about making life altering decisions to her advice now, since he'd already formally resigned as Chief. She'd still said little about that, though, since they'd need to move ahead with the house plans, and eventually, with the baby making.

They hadn't talked much about that lately, though, the baby making. It seemed vaguely obscene, after all the funerals, and even like tempting fate, though she'd already thrown her pregnancy test kits away, and she still just couldn't take the look in his eyes, as if it was all just one more thing he had to apologize for.

Leaning back in her pillow, she glanced at the shopping bag slouched on her dresser. She'd wear her new shoes when she went to see Dr. Wyatt again, to be cleared to return to surgery. Hospital policy, Richard had insisted, whenever anyone pressed him.

She didn't believe him, but visions of Wyatt's fish tank, riddled with bullets and dripping blood, teased her dreams as she awoke suddenly, just before dawn. She vaguely heard Alex throwing up in the bathroom across the hall, remembering that his meds were still making him nauseous and even cereal was a gamble most mornings.

* * *

Working his way down the stairs, he entered the kitchen, grabbing a bowl and a box. He couldn't keep a wife, couldn't keep a girl friend, couldn't keep his attention on an hour long video, but he was damned well going to keep down some freaking cereal.

"Hey," she said from behind, crossing the room to dig out a mug from the cabinet, and setting the tea pot on the stove.

Her hands were still rock steady, he noticed, like the first night he remembered her fingers squeezing his at the hospital, before she realized he was waking, and tugged them away again, grabbing for his chart instead.

"Hey," he mumbled back, pushing the box aside as she dropped the previous day's newspaper on the table. She still looked freaked, like she had the day her real mother had rolled into the hospital, and pale, like she had the morning her fake mother was buried, and tired, like they all had after their first few endless shifts as interns.

He watched her set her mug on the table, and ignore the local news section as she casually pushed the comics back in his direction. She always told him they were juvenile, and rolled her eyes at him as he devoured his Lucky Charms, even as she checked up on her favorites. She dismissed them this morning, though, as she had the past few days.

"You got any names?" he asked gruffly, shrugging lightly as he met her puzzled expression. "Baby names?" he added.

"I was pregnant for like two hours," she snapped. "I didn't even have a chance…" she insisted bitterly, her voice trailing off.

"For next time," he replied, eying her pointedly.

"What?" she demanded incredulously, glaring back at him. They were all taught that much, at least, never to mention next time after a miscarriage. It was like Neonatal 101.

"I'm being a girl," he retorted. "Chicks ask about names, right?" he grumbled, staring back down at his cereal.

Meredith sighed, closing her hands around her steaming mug. Cristina didn't ask. Derek was still maddeningly sympathetic, when he wasn't drowning in guilt. Everyone else was just too numb, or too bewildered, or too scared to ask, or to say anything at all; so was she.

"I wanted it," she whispered finally. "I wasn't sure, at first, but I wanted it."

"Should have names ready, then," he added, still poking warily at his cereal.

"What if I can't-?" she started.

"What if you can, and you don't have a name ready?" he interrupted, glancing vaguely around the kitchen. "And the kid's stuck with Cantaloupe or Kumquat?"

"Kumquat Shepherd?" she snorted.

"Kid's toast on a play ground," he pointed out, exhaling slowly as he dropped his spoon in his bowl.

"What are you a girl duck, now?" she demanded, more sharply then she intended.

"Whatever," he retorted, exhaling again as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking vaguely queasy.

"You good?" she asked, eyeing him closely as she sipped her tea.

"Yeah," he breathed, nodding and pushing his bowl away and blinking his eyes.

"Lexi told me," she said quietly, her eyes fixed on his Rice Crispies.

"She's not coming back," he said flatly, not bothering to specify which she he meant; not that he needed to.

That didn't sound like him, either, or maybe it was just less familiar then the sleepy silence that usually filtered comfortably around them at the breakfast table.

She wondered sometimes if that was the problem with words anyway, if they set fate into motion. Not that she believed in fate, being a scientist and all.

"I could get a book," she said finally. "Of names," she added, in response to his puzzled frown.

"Yeah," he agreed, pushing the comics back toward her as he scanned the sports scores.

"You don't have to be a duck, you know," she insisted quietly, a few minutes later. "If I don't have to be dark and twisty, you don't have to be a duck."

"Didn't work anyway," he mumbled, shrugging and staring back at his bowl.

"At least your name isn't Kumquat," she pointed out, rising to rinse out her mug.

"Or Cantaloupe," he agreed, shrugging again as he returned his attention to the sports pages.

"Your appointment's early," she reminded him, motioning to the faint daylight seeping into the room. "Chief's orders."

"Freaking shrink," he scowled, rolling his eyes.

"She's not that bad, actually," Meredith said, moving to the counter to retrieve her purse and keys as he dumped the rest of his cereal and rinsed out his dish. "And you want to get back to work, right?" she prodded.

"I don't even remember anything," he grumbled, pulling his jacket from the back of his chair. "It's not like-"

"You don't have to talk about that," she interrupted. She didn't say elevator, or supply room, or trail of blood, or short haired woman with the back of her head blown off, or mention the story Lexi told her, about how close he'd been to never being Alex again.

"It can be about anything," she added briskly, grabbing her jacket. It could be about anything, about dreams of bloody baby shoes, or husbands who would never stop apologizing. At least, that's what her most recent session covered, the week before.

"Anything, huh?" he smirked, shaking his head and avoiding her eyes.

"Yeah," she said quietly.

"She's not coming back," he whispered, in a strangled voice that startled her.

"No," she agreed softly, her stomach plummeting as she fingered her keys.

He nodded vaguely, his darkening features a blur as his hands fumbled with his jacket.

"Tell her that," she suggested finally, moving shakily toward the door.

"Huh?" he asked, blinking at her with unfocused eyes.

"Tell her about Izzie," she said hesitantly.

"Tell her what?" he demanded sharply. "That I got shot and she didn't even call? That I almost freaking died and she didn't even…That I…That I…" he stopped just as suddenly, leaning back awkwardly against the wall and exhaling carefully.

"Yeah," Meredith said quietly, still resting against the wall across from him a few minutes later, and watching him closely. "Start with that."


End file.
